The only thing more amusing than massive (impossible) cover-ups is massive (impossible) cover-ups that no one would benefit from._________________The older I get, the more certain I become of one thing. True and abiding cynicism is simply a form of cowardice.

It's a slow process. Today I took some eggs out of the fridge and decided to cook them using this process, because it seems more natural than my electric oven (and I don't think that's healthy). It took about twenty or thirty minutes, but I did manage to heat them up to room temperature. Then I got hoarse from all the chanting and had to switch to boiling. Maybe if I chant louder next time?_________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

Hell is exothermic.
Hell is the opposite of Heaven.
Therefore, Heaven is endothermic.*
Refrigerators are endothermic.
Therefore, Heaven is where God keeps his snacks.
Good people go to Heaven when they die.
Good ingredients go in the refrigerator before being used in a meal.
Therefore, God devours your souls (or at least nibbles on them when He doesn't feel like cooking, storing the rest for a week or two and then throwing them out).

How bizarre! Over 3 pages of comment thread, we had a guy barge in and tell us that DNA is binary (it isn't) and that we should be grateful for having a smart computer programmer and Mensa member like him come in to learn us some new things. Despite being corrected from the start by a handful of cellular biologists and other actual smarty pantses who know how DNA actually works. Some quotes from early on, before things got too repetitious:

Most people don't realize DNA is just Binary information and therefore easily manipulated by chance and nature. Here's a debate between myself and a fool creationist which is one of the few times I've explained perfectly IMO:

The reason people like Dawkins don't focus on this aspect of evolutionary science is only because they are not computer scientists, and people like him are as illiterate about computers as creationists are about DNA.

DNA can't be binary (0 or 1) because there are four choices for a base at each position, so it isn't clear what you mean. Can you explain in text without referring to a link that I had to close after several seconds of "caching for the first time"?

This reply is for BioTurboNik. The commenting engine on this site is jank and I can't even tell if my reply is going directly to you or not. but here goes: Since in DNA the AT is always as a pair and the GC is always paired, there are really two options, either AT or GC. That's binary. If you take random mutations where only the end of the chain is adding a new rung to the DNA ladder therefore you have a 50/50 chance of the mutation being BENIFICIAL v.s. DETRIMENTAL to survival of the organism. So half of the endpoint mutations will be beneficial and half detrimental. It makes perfect mathematical, and evolutionary sense too. Now lets see where this damn text posts to when I hit submit.

Wrong in several instances. First, any position could be A, T, G, or C. Even though A and T always pair, you only have one of them at a given position. So, not binary.

This throws your calculation of beneficial vs. detrimental off.

But that's wrong anyway. The protein coding regions of DNA use degenerate triplets, allowing a mixture of silent and significant changes depending on exactly which base is altered and what it's changed to. Plus not every amino acid is essential - many can be changed with no effect on the protein. Then there is regulatory DNA, where mutations have completely different rules. Then there's the fact that many mutations affect multiple bases....

This reply is for BioTurboNik. The commenting engine on this site is jank and I can't even tell if my reply is going directly to you or not. but here goes: Since in DNA the AT is always as a pair and the GC is always paired, there are really two options, either AT or GC. That's binary. If you take random mutations where only the end of the chain is adding a new rung to the DNA ladder therefore you have a 50/50 chance of the mutation being BENIFICIAL v.s. DETRIMENTAL to survival of the organism. So half of the endpoint mutations will be beneficial and half detrimental. It makes perfect mathematical, and evolutionary sense too. Now lets see where this damn text posts to when I hit submit.

Wrong in several instances. First, any position could be A, T, G, or C. Even though A and T always pair, you only have one of them at a given position. So, not binary.

This throws your calculation of beneficial vs. detrimental off.

But that's wrong anyway. The protein coding regions of DNA use degenerate triplets, allowing a mixture of silent and significant changes depending on exactly which base is altered and what it's changed to. Plus not every amino acid is essential - many can be changed with no effect on the protein. Then there is regulatory DNA, where mutations have completely different rules. Then there's the fact that many mutations affect multiple bases....

In short, context is everything when it comes to a mutation.

You're trying to narrowly define a "Straw Man" so you can disagree with him. I realize protein encoding is a complex process, and didn't address that so you are arguing against yourself there. My point is only that DNA is built of ladder rungs only of two different types of "base pairs". You have either AT or GC. Usually evolution happens by moving contiguous multi-base-pair units around, that had already evolved, but as a general rule when the original replicator molecules formed they were definitely not millions of rungs on the ladder, and grew gradually in length. My interesting insight, which you never knew before, is that this is ultimately digital information. Just admit you learned something, and thank me.

Whoa, look at that ego!

What straw man are you discussing? A:T is distinct from T:A. They are not equivalent in any way, shape, or form. Nothing gets added to the "end" of a DNA, and whether something is beneficial or detrimental is not directly related to the base itself, but the context it is found in, as John Timmer correctly points out.

This reply is for BioTurboNik. The commenting engine on this site is jank and I can't even tell if my reply is going directly to you or not. but here goes: Since in DNA the AT is always as a pair and the GC is always paired, there are really two options, either AT or GC. That's binary. If you take random mutations where only the end of the chain is adding a new rung to the DNA ladder therefore you have a 50/50 chance of the mutation being BENIFICIAL v.s. DETRIMENTAL to survival of the organism. So half of the endpoint mutations will be beneficial and half detrimental. It makes perfect mathematical, and evolutionary sense too. Now lets see where this damn text posts to when I hit submit.

Wrong in several instances. First, any position could be A, T, G, or C. Even though A and T always pair, you only have one of them at a given position. So, not binary.

This throws your calculation of beneficial vs. detrimental off.

But that's wrong anyway. The protein coding regions of DNA use degenerate triplets, allowing a mixture of silent and significant changes depending on exactly which base is altered and what it's changed to. Plus not every amino acid is essential - many can be changed with no effect on the protein. Then there is regulatory DNA, where mutations have completely different rules. Then there's the fact that many mutations affect multiple bases....

In short, context is everything when it comes to a mutation.

You're trying to narrowly define a "Straw Man" so you can disagree with him. I realize protein encoding is a complex process, and didn't address that so you are arguing against yourself there. My point is only that DNA is built of ladder rungs only of two different types of "base pairs". You have either AT or GC. Usually evolution happens by moving contiguous multi-base-pair units around, that had already evolved, but as a general rule when the original replicator molecules formed they were definitely not millions of rungs on the ladder, and grew gradually in length. My interesting insight, which you never knew before, is that this is ultimately digital information. Just admit you learned something, and thank me.

Whoa, look at that ego!

What straw man are you discussing? A:T is distinct from T:A. They are not equivalent in any way, shape, or form. Nothing gets added to the "end" of a DNA, and whether something is beneficial or detrimental is not directly related to the base itself, but the context it is found in, as John Timmer correctly points out.

I would argue that AT is identical to TA. When you snap it into the molecule it can go in either way. The point is not that it's literally a digital computer, but the point is that nature has chosen the simplest type of information storage possible, which is to have a long molecule with only two types of units that make it up. Computer programmers like myself are literally astounded and stupefied by this fact, but people who are illiterate about number theory (computational theory), don't "get it" about how astounding this fact is. BTW it's ok to have the Ego, as long as you have the Mensa test results to back it up, bro.

Your argument is wrong. It is based on a faulty premise. A single base is inserted in one strand at one time. It is never added as a pair, nor is it ever used as a pair. The pairing only matters because it allows it to be read. I never said you claimed it is "literally a digital computer"--you failed to define your terms when requested, and specifically said "binary".

And there are actually more than 4 units if you start counting modified bases.

Assuming your claim about Mensa is true, this conversation is a great example of how IQ doesn't measure everything useful. You seem to be confusing "smarter" with "infinitely smart, knows more than anyone else about everything, can never make a mistake, and other people who know something about a topic aren't worth listening to." You also seem to do a bit more poorly in figuring out how to communicate your ideas to other people. So take it down a notch.

Finally, after having it explained to a bajillion different ways over 3 pages, he suddenly went back and baleeted all his posts (which is a violation of the board's TOS and got him a moderator warning). Fortunately, as you see, we can reconstruct almost the entire exchange from the quotes of his stupidity left behind. He was even nice enough to use his real name and personal photo for a Gravatar, plus he linked to his own website. Sure hope Google doesn't tie all that together with any professional profiles, or anything!

It's a slow process. Today I took some eggs out of the fridge and decided to cook them using this process, because it seems more natural than my electric oven (and I don't think that's healthy). It took about twenty or thirty minutes, but I did manage to heat them up to room temperature. Then I got hoarse from all the chanting and had to switch to boiling. Maybe if I chant louder next time?

If you hadn't begun with chilled eggs you'd have been reet. Eggs don't need fridgeration - they come from hot chicken pussy to begin with man.